The Ides of March...and Adar

Mid-month seems to have significance, go figure.

Julius Caesar had good reason to beware this fifteenth day of March, but it always seemed a favorable time to me (albeit for no good reason that I can recall).

The fifteenth of the Hebrew month of Adar is Shushan Purim, the day that the holiday of Purim is celebrated in Jerusalem to commemorate a battle in the ancient city of Shushan that was not yet complete by the fourteenth (when the rest of the world was already celebrating).

 

What impresses me most about Purim in the context of this blog is the historic decision of Queen Esther to act against her individual interest for the sake of her communal interest.

A word of explanation for any readers unfamiliar with the story: a decree had been sent to the far reaches of King Ahasuerus' realm (from what is today's Ethiopia on the one side to India on the other) that the Jews of the kingdom were to be put to death on the fourteenth of Adar. Unbeknownst to the king, his queen hailed from the Jewish people. Esther's uncle prevailed upon her to request the king's mercy for her people. But she was wary of approaching the king when he hadn't summoned her; after all, her predecessor, Vashti, had been summarily dismissed (whether exiled or executed) for her refusal to appear before the court when the king called for her. The opposite defiance, to be sure, but Esther knew well that this was a king who required compliance.

The Swooning of Esther, Antoine Coypel, 1704
(only one of many artists' conceptions of Esther fainting before the king)

In response to her concern that initiating with the king might prove suicidal, Mordechai, the Jewish uncle, presented her opportunity to act in stark terms. He suggested that her presence on the throne was by divine design, to enable her to save the Jewish people with her daring. Or alternatively, the Jewish people would be saved by other means - in accordance with the divine will - in which case, Esther and her family's name would be lost to history - a less tangible (and therefore potentially less threatening) kind of suicide.

How rare! - For an individual's decision to carry (potentially) the fate of a people. It is not easy to envy Esther her life-and-death quandary, though we know it turned out well (she approached the king, names the culprit who decreed against her people, and the king rescinds the decree on behalf of his queen). After all, Esther did not know the end of her own story. And yet...

Rembrandt's Ahasuerus and Haman at the Feast of Esther
Note his famous use of light and dark to highlight the good and hide the bad.

How differently we all might act if we knew the ends of our own stories. How much would we have done differently thus far? How much would we do differently going forward? But we have no choice but to act in the moment, with our eyes to the future and a nod to the past. Which is why Esther's decision to act for the sake of the Jewish people, risking her own safety and well-being is impressive. In the absence of prophecy, being able to see beyond the moment is indeed enviable - even for decisions that are not as far-reaching as Esther's.

Note: Purim was celebrated a week ago, and Shushan Purim, in Jerusalem last Friday. It's a topsy-turvy day on the Jewish calendar, and I write about it in this untimely way rather than squander the opportunity, as the myriad lessons from last week carry forward.